By Venus Zarris

Towards the end of 2010 I received an e-mail invitation to a “super secret presentation” of The Hunchback Variations Opera. This was not a full opera mind you but rather a fragment, the thus far work-in-progress of playwright Mickle Maher’s celebrated The Hunchback Variations set to an original operatic score by composer Mark Messing.

Maher and Messing are nothing short of geniuses. I had heard their collaboration before in Redmoon Theater’s production of The Cabinet, to date one of the most astonishing theatrical productions I have ever witnessed due in large part to Maher’s transfixing script and Messing’s haunting musical composition.

To be invited to sample a project by these two staggering talents was like getting an e-mail saying, “We’ve discovered a new universe. Would you care to come and take a sneak peek through our telescope?” Of course I gladly accepted.

The workshop/presentation/party was held on December 1, 2010 up an industrial stairwell and down a cavernous hallway at Mark Messing’s “Maestro-Matic ultra-hep warehouse-y studio.” The workshop production consisted of two singers, a pianist and a cellist. The Hunchback Variations is an imagined panel discussion between Beethoven and Quasimodo.

“As we are both deaf, there will be no questions taken from the audience.”

This is NOT the stuff of standard theater, MUCH LESS standard opera. It IS the stuff of an absurdist masterpiece. Maher’s writing is cerebral and acerbic. Little to nothing about this script lends itself to music, much less the constructs of opera, but Messing takes the traditional framework of operatic composition and applies a musical quantum physics to perfectly meet The Hunchback Variations somewhere in the midst of the its unreal realm. We heard only a handful of movements to the opera. That was more than enough to know that we were in the audience of something extraordinary.

What struck me most about the movements was the whimsical thread that came through in the musical composition. Obviously Messing paid detailed attention to a historically structural approach to operatic composition, applying various methods to the challenges presented by the text. In the center of all of that musical calculation there was a seemingly organic humor that supported the absurdity of the libretto. This did not surface as obvious cartoonish simplifications of musical themes, but rather as a deceptively playful and beautifully intricate dialogue between the music and text.

I found myself thinking of Dr. Seuss, and not merely because the singer playing Quasimodo (I’m sorry but I didn’t write down his name) had the delightfully deep tonal quality of the Grinch. There is something quantum that surfaces in Geisel’s stories, regardless of the subject matter and characters, that also surfaces in the absurd complexity of Maher’s writing. The components seem one-dimensional on the surface but are actually theoretically expansive and perceptively ingenious. Messing tapped into that musically, which supported the dialogue between the music and text on an elegant and intuitive level.

The musicians and singers were magnificent, bringing rich and elaborate textures to their delivery. All the more impressive was the fact that what we heard was the result of only two rehearsals. Given the obscure nature of the composition, this was the equivalent of running an artistic and abstract marathon after only two minutes of stretching.

Maher’s script is cold yet welcoming, dark yet endearing, ridiculous yet fascinating. It is a purgatory of the peculiar and Messing’s composition made an obscure chamber piece of the intricate irreverence. The outcome was beguiling and mischievous, dense and delightful.

What we experienced was the result of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, well spent on collaborative genius. To the best of my knowledge there are no definite plans for this project’s future.

So why write about it? 1. To document this extraordinary event. 2. To encourage its continuation. 3. To generate interest in possible productions upon its completion.

And 4. Today is Mickle Maher’s Birthday, a day that is well worth celebrating.

Images by Venus Zarris.

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